


stuck here again

by Crazyamoeba



Category: Far Cry (Video Games), Far Cry 5
Genre: (small and briefly referenced but it's there), Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Alternative Universe - No Cult, Gen, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, issues of masculinity, jacob likes to push buttons, staci has buttons for the pushing, wind him up and watch him go
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-20
Updated: 2018-06-20
Packaged: 2019-05-26 05:25:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,315
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14993759
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Crazyamoeba/pseuds/Crazyamoeba
Summary: Staci doesn't know how one man, with the regular number of fingers on each hand, can push every last one of his buttons at the same time.He is good with cars, though.





	stuck here again

**Author's Note:**

  * For [devils_trap](https://archiveofourown.org/users/devils_trap/gifts).



> This is for devils_trap, who puts up with all my excited babbling about these two dorks, and who got me ridiculously excited with all the talk of no-cult aus. And Jacob Seed having a Need for Speed.
> 
> Also: I don't know cars, so don't blame me when this doesn't make sense. I take mine to a garage like a regular Staci.

 

 

Staci's ears thunder in time with the darkened clouds tumbling across the skyline, threatening to drown them out all together.

 

His hands shake where they rest, loose and sweaty on the steering wheel.

 

They stayed at ten-to-two; standard, Hope County PD-approved positioning, as his eyes rest, just as moist and useless, on the horizon.

 

He tries to breathe without choking around the jagged, roughened anger that's clogging his throat.

 

Fuck today.

 

He forces his hands to hang limp in their fury, to allow the bitter, white surges to bypass his palms and to flow straight through and out of his fingers. It crackles through them, itching like ice, and he gently clenches and unclenches them in an effort to keep them from stiffening.

 

He could really do without adding 'self-fucking-harm' to his list of reasons why today – and he was aware that days like 'today' were an increasingly frequent occurrence – was a wash.

 

A faded, mildew-y, left-damp-for-too-long, wash.

 

Bad enough that he's sitting here like a gaping, gormless fish – he's pretty sure that Hurk had bagged specimens with more gumption and options than he had right now.

 

Like the mouth-breathing, blank-eyed kid he had been trying so hard to leave behind since his graduation robe had swallowed him whole.

 

He had really hoped that that child would do the decent thing and suffocate quietly before it was time to return the his robes.

 

Two years later, had hoped that his deputy's uniform had no more room for that kid who had stared – _he's always s_ _t_ _aring,_ _what the hell's he looking at, he's weird –_ in utter helplessness at the numbers that had taken their incomprehensible shapes on the whiteboard of every classroom he'd ever been in.

 

As it turned out, the little bastard was hard to leave behind.

 

No kid left behind, even the one you really could have done without.

 

So he really didn't need to rock rock up at the Hope County PD with another reason for Whitehorse, or Nancy, or even Hudson to look at him like you would look at an incontinent shelter dog.

 

He flicks the keys in the ignition and listens to the valiant, sputtering efforts of the car as they died before ever really living.

 

The good news was that incontinent-shelter-dog-eyes weren't going to be a problem he would need to worry about if he couldn't actually find his way back to the station.

 

Fuck Hope County. Fuck Montana. Fuck all this wide, wild expanse of natural beauty and the wonders of the landscape.

 

It's 2018 in the United States of god-damn America. It shouldn't be possible for a man to get stranded in the fucking wilderness anymore.

 

 _'Not just any man,'_ a voice inside him pipes up like a shrill, unwelcome cuckoo, _'a man of the_ law. _You're supposed to be a man of the law. Of authority. And you're lost. Stuck. Helpless.'_

 

Forcefully breathing out of his nose, his hands tremble a little as he flings them into action, because he knew what this was and he was not here for it.

 

Except he was a little here for it, because despite his efforts to find something to do with his clammy, cold hands, he could feel his heart speeding up inside his chest as the poisonous words seemed to lodge there, slowly pumping the bitter, aching panic across his body with every heartbeat.

 

And his hands, now thrumming with the excess adrenaline that fear and pre-emptive humiliation brought, hovered uselessly in the air in a complete want of things to do.

 

Staci looked around, considering. Eyes scouring the inside of the car which he knew all too well held limited options for him, nevertheless desperately hoping to discover some beacon of hope that had managed to go undiscovered for the duration of his entire career spent inside this car.

 

The radio? Yeah, sure.

 

_'Hey, this is Deputy Pratt reporting in. I'm a grown man and a colleague that you regularly have to rely on; I'm stuck out here in the wilderness and I can't get home. Please come help me.'_

 

Frankly, he'd rather take a bullet.

 

His phone? Same problem, moot point. Good luck getting signal out in the sticks.

 

Why did he even volunteer to come out here? There was never anything wrong at Miss Mable's, barring her unrestrained racism and a growing persecution complex, which...given the wide-spread knowledge of the first part, Staci wasn't entirely sure was unfounded.

 

But he liked Peaches. Enjoyed the opportunity to run his fingers over the diamond-swatches of her fur as she rubbed against her fence to greet him.

 

_Well, congratulations, boy. You're stranded like a god-damn moron because you wanted to pet a kitty._

 

The voice isn't his, but its tone and timbre are so familiar to him that they might as well be. He slams his hands back on the wheel and tilts his head back to draw in a deep breath.

 

_Everyone's gonna see what kind of a man you are, and why? Because you wanted to put your hands on something soft and warm. Hope it was worth it, genius._

 

He wrenches the badge from his chest and throws it into the passenger seat like it burns his skin.

 

_It can't actually hear you, dumbass. Might be a disgrace to it, but it can't actually hear or see the mess you've made of it._

 

Whatever.

 

It was satisfying enough. The closest he was able to get to ripping and tearing properly with soft, blunt, stupid human fingers.

 

“Fuck you guys.” He looks down at the offending digits, trembling and offering nothing. “Stubby, squishy, useless little assholes.”

 

Movement in the corner of his eye makes his heart drop and his face feel hot even as the blood seems to vacate it.

 

The vehicle that had appeared in his rear-view was slowing, stopping.

 

In the middle of the road. Staci's whole body is vibrating.

 

Whatever this is, he does Not have time for this.

 

His heart kicks up a gear as he frantically searches for the discarded badge, like secret drunk looking for the empties in the face of an unexpected visitor. Praying wetly that it wouldn't be necessary at all, that this interloper would realise their rudeness and Go Away.

 

He doesn't have time to be calm for a civilian when his own skin is doing its best to shudder right off his body.

To be polite when all he wants to do is shout the worst words he knows to anyone who would stand there and listen.

To be in-control when he's barely fighting the urge to get out of his silent, dead squad car and walk away from it.

 

He might as well have just thrown his fucking career away along with the badge he had tossed – and _where the fuck was it?_

 

Eyes flicking to the mirror and seeing that the white pick-up had now come to a complete stop, his eyes did one last sweep of the interior of the car before giving up with a muttered curse.

 

He tries not to kick the door open as he shoved himself from the car.

 

Tries not to immediately throw himself right back in it.

 

He knows that fucking truck.

 

It makes his fingers – yep, still useless and squishy and that fact rankled now more than ever – curl, his gums itch, and his head ache.

 

He places his feet very carefully, one in front of the other, and sets his gaze stubbornly front and centre so as to avoid either glaring into the truck or deliberately refusing to acknowledge it all together.

 

Professionalism.

 

Except, right now more than ever, Jacob fucking Seed is entirely surplus to requirements.

 

Staci would break his own stupid, helpless fingers one-by-one, if it meant he could be anywhere but here.

 

Jacob Seed is a dick. A grade-A, certified, unrepentant dick.

 

Staci had pulled the asshole over so many times he had lost count.

 

And it doesn't matter that whenever he saw the giant dickbag, Staci felt like some spotty, greasy freshman who came over all sweaty-palmed on seeing the hot professor outside of the classroom.

 

It doesn't matter that it threw him for a loop - _“you a little flustered there, Deputy?” -_ no matter where he was, if that lumbering jack-off was anywhere to be found.

 

Last weekend, it had been the hardware store. Jacob hadn't even seen him.

 

But Staci had felt resentful, angry and bruised when he had ducked into another aisle to avoid being seen with his brand-new toolkit – the clerk having assured him that it would have everything he could ever need – as Jacob strolled through the store, callused hands hefting his chosen lumber with ease.

 

A month before that, it had been in the parking lot at the Spread Eagle, where Staci was infrequently called, except for the times where there were reports that Jacob Seed was making moves to finish something.

 

When Staci's soft and petty bitching seemed to reach through the haze of Jacob's intense and unnerving focus better than Whitehorse's calm commands and Hudson's dry, authoritative humour.

 

“ _C'mon, Jacob, don't screw me. It's Friday, I'm tired. Do you have any idea how many hours I work in a week, you big idiot? I want to go home. It's fucking freezing out here, and you're the only one keeping me away from my bed right now. I know your dumb ass hasn't been drinking yet – give me a ride and drop me off at my place instead of breaking someone's face. It's the least you could do, you asshole.”_

 

And Staci tries to tell himself every time it happens that it doesn't matter when Jacob fucking Seed – all 200-plus pounds and 6-plus feet of him – paused for a moment in his shark-eyed assessment of whoever was stupid enough to cause a problem for him.

Until something in them flickered and softened like a light bulb before an electrical storm, and something slightly more human descended on them as they looked down at Staci, standing close beside him.

 

Staci tries even harder to tell himself that it absolutely did not matter that he felt a warm rush of power – _yeah, I'm sure that's real healthy –_ and satisfaction whenever Jacob grunted acquiescence and slung an arm over Staci's shoulders, the weight of the limb staggering him.

 

Making him burn with pride and humiliation and arousal as he found himself he focus of all the eyes of the patrons who hadn't high-tailed it at the first signs of Jacob getting riled up – as Jacob Seed allowed himself to be calmed and redirected.

 

“ _Alright, Deputy. Unbunch those panties, we're leaving.”_

 

As if it was an honour for Staci to be guiding his hulking carcass from the bar.

 

As if he were the one doing Staci a favour.

 

Fuck that freckled bastard, Staci hated his knowing smirk and his unnerving, clear eyes. They see entirely too damn much.

 

 

Staci hates the small, scratchy wound of gratitude that he feels for Jacob for giving him that power.

 

For lending him a reflection of his strength and allowing Staci to bask in the smooth burn of overconfidence inside him.

 

A feeling which emanated from the centre of his chest (and perhaps more than a little bit from between his legs), but which had nothing to do with the badge pinned above his heart.

 

None of it mattered, though, because that entitled jerkwad drove his truck like laws were things that happened to other people.

 

Because Staci had pulled him over so many times he had lost count, and the fucker never learned anything.

 

Other than how to push Staci's buttons.

 

Which was, as Jacob had discovered with dismaying speed, not that hard at all. Staci had many buttons to push.

 

And Jacob knew just where to place his fingers to lean on each one.

 

Staci shouldn't have been surprised. For all their size and strength, those fingers were dexterous, and looked clever. Dickbag.

 

Jacob had had absolutely no trouble in discerning that it didn't really matter which words came out of his mouth, provided they came out covered in Jacob's own-brand, home-brewed and roughened form of flirtation.

 

Because Staci was Not Into That.

 

Straight guy flirting with the fag just to get their kicks, just to harden their own pussy-hungry dicks with how quickly they could get the faggot drooling over them.

 

The type that would come with a breezy, poisonous exhale as they laughed at the audacity of Staci's desire.

 

Staci knew Jacob Seed, even though the man himself may not realise. He had seen and known and pined for and touched many Jacobs in his time.

 

He had Jacob's number.

 

Unfortunately, it didn't stop him from wanting to get Jacob's _number._

 

But those were fantasies best left to the hours of the morning so small that there was no room for the outside world in them. No room even for the imaginary faces of all the Jacob Seeds he had ever known to contort from aroused warmth to delighted contempt.

 

No.

 

Staci wasn't into the Jacob Seeds of this world.

 

Except, Staci couldn't quite make himself forget the fact that, on those nights where he wasn't so exhausted that passing out was his only option – on the evenings when it was either a case of comfort-eating, drinking, or jerking off until there was no more room beneath his eyelids for anything he might not care to remember – this is what he watched.

 

His suggested search terms on Pornhub were depressingly lacking in variation.

 

He had the uncomfortable feeling that Jacob Seed knew all this just by looking at him.

 

Sometimes, he would close his eyes, think back to the last time he had pulled Jacob over, and try to recall the most deftly-crafted and double-edged barb that Jacob had lobbed his way.

 

Recall words which may have been unremarkable written on paper, but which Jacob Seed drawled slowly and darkly to life, soaked in sharp-edged and aggressive sexuality.

 

Recall how they had made his dick harden when he had thought about simply biting Jacob's jagged silver tongue from his mouth.

 

He wanted to. God, did he want to.

 

He wanted so desperately to try. Wanted Jacob to force him to accept failure.

 

 

He had the uncomfortable feeling that Jacob knew that too.

 

 

Staci hated how even hearing that low, laconic Southern drawl made him want to find the man and punch him in the face.

 

Scratch him, tear at him. Make bleed while he ripped at his clothes.

 

Goad him into dropping his big, dumb douchebag act and start saying the things that went deep inside Staci.

 

Taunt him into saying the things that stuck under Staci's skin like sand; made it impossible for him to feel alone for as long at the grains itched and burned.

 

Staci wanted to force Jacob into saying those things that would give him a _reason_ to bite and hit and claw. Spit at Jacob while he just sat there and fucking chuckled.

 

While he watched calmly as Staci worked himself into a feeding frenzy of violence.

 

Lean back and watch with those glittering eyes, shrouded with a calm that only ever infuriated Staci more, to the point where he nearly gave into it all.

 

Because Staci imagines that he could, with Jacob.

 

That he could let go of those things under the shadow of those calm eyes, because they were steady and solid, just like the body that went with them, and Staci could never do that with anyone else.

 

 

 

Staci tries to think of all the people he could never do that with as he storms his way over Jacob's stupid, over-sized truck.

 

One scarred forearm was dangling out of the driver side window, resting lazily and allowing two fingers to flutter in Staci's direction in what passed for welcome if you were a Seed.

 

Staci felt a sharp stab in his skull, as if those two fingers had expertly dipped into his fuzzy, over-charged mind and caught onto all the most frayed and delicate threads there. Proceeded to pull gently like bratty children yanked cats' tails.

 

Staci sighed, the breath shaking with the effort required to achieve 'even and calm.'

 

Jacob Seed was a man far more tolerable in retrospect, and good god if that was a lesson Staci was having real trouble learning...

 

He paid all his speeding tickers – calmly and happily accrued in the way that others collect stamps – in pennies and a cheerful promise to see them all next month.

 

He side-eyed traffic laws – _probably other_ _laws_ _too, Staci, you fucking hopeless bag of trash_ – as if they were guidelines on his good days and challenges on his....less good days.

 

He was blocking the middle of the road.

 

With his stupid, extra-manly truck.

 

“Deputy.”

 

The words immediately snagged on every raw, exposed nerve that Staci was currently hosting.

 

“We run into a problem here?”

 

Staci folds his arms, tries not to look too much like he's hunkering down against the slightly chilled wind that is beginning to make itself known.

 

“You're blocking the road, Jacob.”

 

It comes out short, prissy, and Jacob's eyebrows make a slow, sardonic crawl up his forehead.

 

Staci wants to smash his head against one of the many rocks in the area.

 

“Huh.” The whole truck creaks and re-settles as Jacob heaves his torso out of the open window to sweep his gaze slowly in a panorama of the scene before him.

 

“Well, I must have been holding the wrong end of a bent stick, because here I thought that piece of shit car had broken down and left little ol' Deputy Pratt stranded.”

 

Staci folds his arms tighter around his middle, almost rivalling the bloodless clamp of his lips as he refuses to open or move or acknowledge Jacob in any way.

 

Unfortunately, the heated, crackling glare he is sending the other man's way seems to be more than enough acknowledgement for Jacob as his grin grows wide and obnoxiously pleasant. Staci can see the barest hint of eyeteeth peeking through dry, slightly chapped lips.

 

“Glad to see I was wrong,” he shrugs his massive shoulders, fabric heaving reluctantly with them, and Staci feels his eyes betray him as they leave their deadlock with Jacob's own to stalk the movement.

  
More of Jacob's teeth are revealed and Staci takes half a step back, leading with his left foot.

 

“Storm's a'comin', and it'd be a real bitch to be stuck out in that if you were to break down.”

 

As if the weather itself was either on Jacob goddamn Seed's side, or was simply under his command, a silent sheet of white flashed overhead, reflecting the mirth and fire that danced in Jacob's eyes.

 

He withdrew his hand from the window, rested on the key still in the ignition.

 

“Well – if I'm blocking the road, I feel obligated to move. I don't want to stymie the judicious application of the law.”

 

Fingers turned the ignition, and the sound of the truck coming to life wrenched and twisted around Staci's rapid heartbeat in sympathy.

 

“Afternoon, Deputy.”

 

And then, with nothing more than a tip of the head from the driver, the fucking truck actually starts to _fucking move._

 

Gliding slow and untroubled past Staci, who is still standing with arms folded and lips pressed tight together, although he can hear the creaking of both as well as all resolve loosening in the face of abandonment.

 

He. Was being abandoned. By Jacob fucking _Seed._

 

That is _not_ how this shit goes down.

 

“Hey – hey!”

 

He slaps his hand furiously on the hood of the truck, angry when the only sound it produces is a fat, softened _thunk,_ which is unfair given the sting that he has had to pay with.

 

The truck slows, doesn't stop. Staci's hand trembles where is rests like an angry spider on the hot metal.

 

“I'm stuck.”

 

The truck glides – very gradually, as if Jacob is merely failing to accelerate, and Staci's tongue is hurting where his teeth are clamping down on it – to a stop just _past_ Staci.

 

Then, painstakingly – fucking Christ, he's seen student drivers act with more urgency – reverses until they're back level again.

 

“In what?” Jacob's eyes sweep down him, enquiring and blameless. “The mud? A rut?”

 

A smirk with the most sharp, white teeth Staci has ever seen from Jacob Seed, and the hint of a curling, clever tongue behind them.

 

“Stuck on me, Deputy Pratt?”

 

Southern twang drawn out, high and giddy and mocking. Just like the stupid, twisted upturn of the lips that on anyone else would count as a smile, but no, not on Jacob Seed.

 

That was far too uncomplicated and soft for a walking wall of testosterone bricks -

 

“Go fuck yourself Jacob, got a real high opinion of yourself there, don't you?”

 

The words are spitting and punching their way through his aching teeth before he can even think about self-control.

 

“Don't you have some schools or old-folks' homes to drive past at some dumbass speed? Extra points if you hit someone's guide dog, you walking douchecanoe.”

 

“Whoa now, boy.” Jacob's laughter sounds like multiple beer cans hissing open at the same time.

 

Staci's dick is as hard as his clenched fists.

 

“Take it easy there. I'm hurt by such spurious accusations.”

 

One large hand comes to rest, scandalised, on a broad chest ill-suited to the motion.

 

“It's not spurious if you've been clocked by every goddamn deputy in the county!” Staci shrieks, shaking with how thoroughly he is goaded by this man's everything.

 

Staci tries to regulate his breathing, but when he sees Jacob's face, peering out of the truck with an utterly tickled expression on a face so unfit for it -

 

He chokes on the air that he had pulled in to start berating the man on the seriousness of traffic violations, and it leaves him just as suddenly as it had come.

 

Because that face – handsome, yes, but also scarred, shiny and taut with the kiss of long-healed burns, closed off even underneath all the thickened skin – it's not a face given or suited to the gentle and thoroughly bemused expression it's currently wearing like a new shirt.

 

Staci has seen Jacob smirk – usually at him or Hudson or Whitehorse – bare his teeth is something closer to a snarl than genuine amusement – usually at the slow learners at the Spread Eagle where Jacob prefers to go to finish all kinds of problems – and rarely, snort an undignified guffaw – only ever on hearing something whispered in his ear by either of his brothers.

 

But the small, only slightly toothy smile – straight, white, and perfect, which strikes Staci as a cruel though not unexpected irony – that currently stretches his burns and twists his scars in what should be all the wrong ways -

 

Staci doesn't recognise this as a part of Jacob's repertoire, and it makes something in him fall, softly and suddenly. Like missing the last step on the stairs down from his porch when he's on the misty, early-morning shift.

 

“My car's broken down.”

 

Although the words still spill sloppily from his lips, they are perhaps the steadiest thing about his day.

 

His week, his month. His whole fucking year so far.

 

Jacob smiles – only smiles.

 

“Yeah, I know.”

 

There is soft, rasping amusement there, but that is all, and Staci feels angry at himself for how badly he wants to say _'thank you for not laughing at me.'_

 

He has to clench his fingers and focus his eyes on the storm clouds in the distance to prevent himself from thanking Jacob again when he wordlessly opens the truck door and shoos him away from the car.

 

Mostly because he doesn't appreciate being waved away from his own patrol car like a dog that's underfoot, and he's extremely displeased with his belly for twisting and heating at the straight, confident line of Jacob's back as he strides towards Staci's disaster box of a vehicle.

 

“It just – lost power. All the warning lights came on, and it just – stopped.”

 

Jacob hums smoothly, turns to him and raises an eyebrow – pale and barely-there, which Staci has never noticed before but shouldn't be surprised by.

 

“Did you pop the hood?”

 

Staci glares, worries at the day-old splinter in his pinky finger. Stomps over to the car with considerably less grace than Jacob, and doesn't that fact just taste like piss in his cornflakes?

 

“There wouldn't have been any point, He-Man.”

 

Staci wrenches his car door open, leans down further than necessary to reach the lever to pop the good of the car. Doesn't want the warmth of Jacob's amused eyes on his pinking skin.

 

“You think if I knew what I was doing with all this shit that I'd just be sitting here like a dumbass?”

 

There's a click as the hood's lock releases, and Staci straightens just in time to see Jacob's thick arms heft the lid upwards.

 

He ducks back down to fiddle with some frayed leather on the passenger seat.

 

God, he's fucking huge.

 

A high, sweeping whistle scatters his deeply unprofessional thoughts, and sets his teeth even further on – possibly over, must be getting close now – the edge.

 

“Surprised you manage to walk around with that giant chip on your shoulder.”

 

Staci doesn't need to be around the front of the car with Jacob to know that he's smirking again.

 

He pulls a little too hard, winces at the audible _riiip_ of the stray thread of leather.

 

“Yeah, you know what, Mr Seed? The next time I want anything that sounds like it might be advice from a man who's got – y'know, an actual criminal record - I'll just give Sharky Boshaw a call.”

 

Jacob sucks in a wounded breath – the mirth audibly outweighing the injury.

 

“Back to 'Mr Seed' now, huh?”

 

Jacob clucks his tongue and releases some of the air he had been restraining behind his exposed teeth.

 

“I've met cats less ornery than you.”

 

Before Staci can gather his wits to spit like one too, Jacob ducks down and makes himself scarce rootling about in the insides of Staci's car.

 

It takes such incredible and physical effort for Staci to inhale and swallow all of his half-formed, ill-thought-out responses, and relax everything that had seized up over the course of the last ten minutes.

 

He closes his eyes and leans against the car in an attempt to do something that Xander Flynn would probably call 're-centering' himself.

 

Now there was a tragically straight man if ever there was one.

 

The soft and clanking sounds of Jacob working in blessed and very surprising silence is irritatingly soothing.

 

Makes it easier for him to breathe around the past few hours, days, and months that have become lodged in his throat.

 

The industrious sound is companionable, and Staci would be lying if he said that it wasn't finding and pulling at a warm, loose thread inside him.

 

 

Some small, angry part of him was grabbing at that thread with bruised and cracked hands, desperately trying to tug it back, reel it all the way back inside and into its tight, unfathomable knot.

 

Screaming at him not to be impressed because a man has stopped to fix his car.

 

Snarling at him that he shouldn’t _need_ another man to stop and rescue him when his car's broken down.

 

But the voice sounds like his father's, and the hands do too, so he gently urges them both back down to a place where they can't snag on anything important.

 

 

Allows himself to soak up the sounds of Jacob's competence. He feels comforted by it, and he can't deny that it settles in his belly like the feeling of having someone stand very close and very quietly at his back.

 

When Staci opens his eyes, he sees Jacob's hands – square and large and Staci imagines that they're the type that are always warm – deftly working over the guts of the car.

 

Staci feels smug, and he knows that this is most certainly a Bad Sign, but there is nothing to be done about the way his lips curl up at the corners, like the pages of a favourite book.

 

Jacob Seed is big, ex-military, and sports a hide-your-daughters smile. Jacob Seed is a capable and – for the most part – calm, and generally very useful person to have around.

 

Jacob Seed has always been popular in Hope County.

 

And now Staci Pratt has him lumbering out of his truck just before a storm breaks, just to fix his problems.

 

Staci Pratt has Jacob Seed providing for him.

 

_Fuck._

 

Before he really had time to brood on all of the unwelcome implications that come with these equally unwelcome thoughts, his sulking is interrupted by its source when Jacob grunts and straightens.

 

“Spark plugs are loose,” he leans around the still-elevated hood to speak to Staci properly, one arm braced casually on the raised lid, and Staci knows his eye contact is spotty at best.

 

“That's probably not going to be where the money is, but it surely didn't help. You'll want to look at your throttle body, and maybe check your battery as well. You'll need to get someone who knows what they're doing to take a look at it.”

 

Staci swallows and blinks against the sudden clammy coldness that creeps from the crown of his head like sweat. His Adams apple is big and clumsy and all too visible in his throat and he wishes it was cold enough for scarves to be socially acceptable.

 

He wants to open his mouth, but has no idea what he'd do if he did. It feels like both rows of teeth are stuck together with week-old gum.

 

He pushes away from where he's leaning against the car. Stands there and shifts his weight from foot to foot.

 

Jacob's eyes shift downward and linger for a moment, before returning to Staci's burning face.

 

“Don't worry.” The words lilt upwards in time with the eyebrows, and Staci wants to grab something, anything, and throw it at Jacob's stupidly calm face. Wants to ask Jacob to teach him how to do it.

 

“I've done enough for you to be able to limp the old boy home.”

 

There's a barely-there pause, and when Staci meets Jacob's eyes, he finds them narrowed and expectant.

 

Staci's lips quiver, and three of Jacob's fingers – hand still dangling from the top of the hood – raise in exasperated warning.

 

Staci presses his lips together, feels them twitch and tremble against each other.

 

Can't help but brush his gaze over Jacob's own.

 

“I'll follow you back into town, make sure you don't take the highway to heaven on the way back.”

 

“Not confident in your skills, Jacob?”

 

Sometimes, he wonders why he's such a dick. Right now, he's even deigning to wonder which of the two of them is the bigger dick.

 

Jacob huffs out an irritated, disbelieving snort. Shakes his head before turning back to Staci with an enquiring – if rather flat – set to his brow.

 

“You really think you're in the position to be trying that attitude?”

 

Staci smiles up at him sweetly, lips pressed firmly together.

 

“Really? That your final answer? Could'a tried 'gratitude' or 'grace' on for size, even though they probably don't come in 'skinny little bastard' ranges.”

 

Jacob's eyes drag across his body, up, down, then up again, slow like burnt sugar.

 

“I suppose 'pissy princess' is a better fit on you anyway.”

 

Staci narrows his eyes; feels his face heating and doubles down on his glare when Jacob snorts a laugh.

 

“Not doing a whole lot to change my mind there, Deputy.”

 

The use of his title clunks oddly in his belly, disappointingly unlike the sounds Jacob had been drawing from his car, and as jarring as the raindrop that hits his eyelid like a warning.

 

“My skills are fine. It's yours that got me quaking in my boots.”

 

Staci's jaw drops, uncaring of the second raindrop that decides to join its brethren.

 

Jacob raises a forestalling hand.

 

“Now, I'm not saying that I don't trust you to drive back into town without undoing all my hard work. I just don't-”

 

Jacob stops, makes a show of rolling the words over his tongue with exaggerated care.

 

“I just don't necessarily have....confidence. That you will not fuck it up.”

 

Jacob nods his head minutely after leaving that steaming turd on the carpet, and takes a small step back, eyes on Staci and face placid if you ignored the fact that his lips looked like they were being jerked by an invisible fish-hook.

 

Staci just wants to bite that fucking tongue until it can't be so fucking clever.

 

What he does instead, is swipe his hand quickly out to the right, knocking down the support strut that holds the lid of the car's hood open.

 

Jacob – still leaning heavily on the offending metal – staggers momentarily, and Staci feels a hot flash of malicious victory, followed immediately by a stale irritation as Jacob easily rights himself and cocks a smug, lopsided grin at Staci.

 

“Y'know, I gotta say, Deputy. I'm kinda surprised that you couldn't fix this yourself.”

 

Staci can unfortunately feel the slackening of all his features as rage and indignation numbs everything beyond the point of movement.

 

And then, like one who just didn't value the gift of life anymore,

 

“Figured with you being a pilot, you'd be more'n capable.”

 

Then the _dicknose_ is turning his back and walking breezily away from Staci, who is barely managing to breathe through the fog of arrogance and absolute _pig-headed assholery_ that Jacob Seed leaves in his wake like those fucking chem trails that Hurk Drubman won't ever shut up about.

 

He spends a good ten seconds almost waddling from foot to foot on the spot, trying to regain his equilibrium by somehow tipping some of the excess outrage out of either ear.

 

When he finally rapid-blinks himself out of his fury-coma, he has to practically trot to catch up to Jacob as he calmly loads his tools back into his truck.

 

“Fuck you, Jacob – just. Just fuck you. You're a walking sack of bullshit!”

 

He has to spit the words up at Jacob as he follows the man's serene back-and-forth between his truck and Staci's cruiser, and it makes him feel like one of those small, yappy, bad-tempered dogs.

 

“Do you have any idea how much work it takes to become a pilot? Do you?”

 

He doesn't give Jacob the chance to answer, and is irritated by the fact that the man doesn't seem to want one – is more than happy to lean against the truck, bracing his arm against the door and, with a small and boyish grin, watch the fireworks that he has lit.

 

That Staci has _let_ him light.

 

At least there's no point in holding back now, not with both of them so invested.

 

“You know what, I'm going to go ahead and take a wild stab in the dark – which is something that I really hope you're the recipient of one day, by the way - “

 

Jacob's grin is a stupid, wobbling, goofy thing, ridiculous on his stern and foreboding face, and there is a catch in Staci's throat that he has to ruthlessly squash down to make way for the rest of his fury.

 

“I'm going to take that wild stab in the dark and guess that you don't know how much work is involved, seeing as you apparently thought that taking the time to learn how to read speed limits and stop signs – and fucking red lights, Jacob, what the hell? I know that was you last week, I'm not a fucking idiot – was just too damn much for you to cope with! ”

 

Jacob's eyes are glued to his face, and it's beginning to be a little unnerving because he's still _smiling_ and Staci doesn't know what to _do_ with that and -

 

He feels his teeth click as he makes the conscious effort to quite literally pull himself together – or at least his jaw, which is gaping once again in its best guppy impression – trying to stop himself in his already-derailed tracks.

 

But it's like he's feeling around blindly in the dirt for a rock to throw, and he just can't stop his uselessly roving fingers, because good Christ, he wants to lob something at Jacob – anything to break that stare and interrupt that _look_ on his face – anything to make him react.

Except Staci is the one reacting, like a cheap but explosive middle-school science project.

 

“And also, in case it had escaped your notice – cars aren't helicopters, jerkwad!”

 

Speaking of middle school. Jesus fucking Christ.

 

Staci closes his eyes.

 

Feels more than hears Jacob's warm exhale.

 

“Uh huh. I know.”

 

He hears fabric rustling and then sharp metallic jangling as Jacob retrieves his keys from his pocket.

 

“I know you're what – twenty-six?”

 

Staci's nod is perfunctory and minute, and he still doesn't open his eyes.

 

“You're twenty-six. You're a Sheriff's Deputy. You're a helicopter pilot. I'd say that's enough that you don't need to feel ashamed for not knowing what most people don't. Garages exist for a reason.”

 

That thread is unravelling inside of Staci again, hot and soft, and every imperfection and bump makes something inside him lurch and plummet.

 

Jacob's eyes are hard and as serious as Staci has ever seen them as they come to rest on his own, slow and heavy like falling snow.

 

Bright and crackling as he ruins it all when he hops back into his truck.

 

“Besides, you said it yourself.”

 

Staci wants to pre-emptively punch that stupid head as it leans out of the open window.

 

“Cars aren't helicopters. Now get in yours, your highness, before the fucking storm strands us both out here before you can thank me like someone raised you right.”

 

Fucking dickhead.

 

Staci is so fucked.


End file.
